You can hoe it up and soak the stems in water to make a fungicide for your garden. I've posted the recipe on other horse tail threads.
Otherwise just keep hoeing it off and leave it to dry completely before it goes anywhere near a compost bin. Very important to remove the sporing stems in spring before they release their spores across the rest of your garden.
Weedkillers will work on what's above ground but you have to crush the stems so it can penetrate as they contain a lot of silica - used for scouring pans in olden days. Weed killers will not penetrate far enough down to the roots to kill them so constant vigilance is needed to make sure new shoots don't spread.
Vendée - 20kms from Atlantic coast.
"The price good men (and women) pay for indifference to public affairs is to be ruled by evil men (and women)."
Hi - just revisiting this old thread I posted last year in regards to mares tail.
We've recently had the garden levelled and thinking whether to topsoil and turf, or have artificial grass. We favour artificial grass, but I have a major concern with the mares tail coming through it.
Can anyone advise if it will almost definitely get through artificial grass? If so, perhaps the best thing to do is to top soil and turf and then hope with years of mowing it kills the weed off.
It comes through tarmac so will make short work of artificial grass. At least with real grass the frequent mowing will go some way towards controlling the marestail.
Doncaster, South Yorkshire. Soil type: sandy, well-drained
Thanks Jenny. I did actually come across this articles earlier, difficult to know if the company who installed used any sort of weed membrane and a good quality artificial grass! So thought I would ask here to see if anyone else has experienced it before using this ladies experience as gospel!
I don't think the quality of the artificial grass and whatever's underneath will make any difference to mares tail. Fortunately I haven't had to deal with it, so maybe someone else will be along with their view. I don't think there are many people on here with artificial lawns though.
Doncaster, South Yorkshire. Soil type: sandy, well-drained
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Otherwise just keep hoeing it off and leave it to dry completely before it goes anywhere near a compost bin. Very important to remove the sporing stems in spring before they release their spores across the rest of your garden.
Weedkillers will work on what's above ground but you have to crush the stems so it can penetrate as they contain a lot of silica - used for scouring pans in olden days. Weed killers will not penetrate far enough down to the roots to kill them so constant vigilance is needed to make sure new shoots don't spread.
We've recently had the garden levelled and thinking whether to topsoil and turf, or have artificial grass. We favour artificial grass, but I have a major concern with the mares tail coming through it.
Can anyone advise if it will almost definitely get through artificial grass? If so, perhaps the best thing to do is to top soil and turf and then hope with years of mowing it kills the weed off.
Any advice gratefully received. Thanks.